Heath Remembered

In August 2000, Vanity Fair featured a rising young star on its cover: Heath Ledger. Bruce Weber’s photographs captured the looks, character, and promise that the actor’s co-workers and friends described in the accompanying cover story. Ledger fulfilled that promise before his untimely death, in January 2008. Here, a selection of images from Weber’s shoot, both published and unpublished. Related: “We’re Havin’ a Heath Wave,” by Kevin Sessums. Plus: “The Last of Heath, by Peter Biskind.

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Heath Ledger, then 21, in an outtake from the cover-story shoot for the August 2000 issue.

Ledger told Sessums, “When anything is blocking my head or there’s worry in my life, I just—whoosh—go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth.… You don’t see the fear. You don’t see the pain. You don’t see the movie industry. You don’t see this interview. You don’t see thought. It’s just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn’t.”

“The camera just relaxes on him,” said Rufus Sewell, who co-starred with Ledger in A Knight’s Tale. “When the camera hits certain people, you can feel it sort of go, ‘Ah, that’s O.K. We’re in good hands here.’”

“Yes, he’s sexy—not traditionally handsome, but there is something there in those eyes of his. They can get incredibly compassionate,” said director Shekhar Kapur, who cast Ledger as the lead in the remake of Zoltán Korda’s 1939 classic, The Four Feathers.